Marc Krone: Teaching the Intricacies of Singing and Acting in Musical Theater

Singing and acting at the same time is, according to the intro text of Paul Cohen’s observational film Local 205 (54 min.), ‘solving a math problem like playing football’. These are two completely different skills that musical actors must nevertheless combine flawlessly. At the Fontys School of the Arts in Tilburg, director and former actor Marc Krone teaches students the intricacies of the demanding musical profession. He has started his last year as a teacher.

Cohen watches as Krone makes his pupils sing in front of fellow students. There they are, thrown back on themselves. On that mostly empty stage, covered only in the back by a black curtain. And he watches, breaks in and corrects – also physically – so that they really get to know the character and preferably themselves. By unleashing what is hidden within them, Marc Krone prepares young people for what the profession demands of them, but also makes them, in the here and now, fragile and understandable.

Lokaal 205, also dubbed the Marc Krone Hall, has proven to be the gateway to an international musical career for many. That is where eighty percent of this documentary takes place. That’s a bit much. Although the emerging talents are at their most vulnerable and their teacher is clearly in his element, all those intensive coaching sessions, contained in long, observational scenes, quickly start to look the same to an outsider.

In between, Krone looks back on his own training as an actor with the American theater guru Stella Adler and Floortje van den Akker, a student whom he allows to look deep into her own soul in front of the camera, is given the opportunity to reflect on what he stirs up in her. and how that helps her as a musical star-to-be. For students like Floortje, Krone probably embodies the ideal teacher: a strict teacher, a professional idiot, an inspiration, a comedian and, yes, a parental figure.

After almost an hour of performance, in which the teacher also made his own position subject to discussion in the group due to the ongoing #metoo discussion in the outside world, they together take a look at the names of their predecessors, who were performing in the Marc Krone Hall. have been helped on the right track and are now on stage in half the world. That could also be their destination. Where they, each in their own way, kick a ball around and solve a math problem in the meantime.

2023-10-28 20:56:10
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